The Japanese retailer MUJI, known for their minimalist home furnishings and micro-apartment designs, has designed an autonomous vehicle. Teaming up with Sensible 4, a Finnish startup working on weatherproof technology for autonomous vehicles, the two companies have collaborated on a sleek new... View full entry

With industrial robotics forecast to be worth $71.72 billion by 2023, it’s no wonder entrepreneurs are turning their attention to increasingly lucrative sectors, like warehouse automation, order fulfillment, and manufacturing.

Tel Aviv-based Intsite is one of the latest examples. The startup today announced a $1.35 million pre-seed round led by Terra Venture Partners and the Israel Innovation Authority to fund what it claims is the world’s first autonomous crane technology.
— Venture Beat

Image: IntsiteAI-powered autonomous construction technology is poised to see enormous growth in the coming years, promising to significantly increase efficiency, cut costs & realization time, and reduce human errors as well as workplace-related injuries. "According to McKinsey, about... View full entry

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is back at it again with more outlandish ideas to solve Los Angeles' traffic. Earlier this month, Musk's latest venture–The Boring Company–resuscitated its flawed proposal to dig new car tunnels for Los Angeles, this time to connect the Red Line subway with Dodger Stadium [...] The Chicago tunnel idea is bad enough, but the Dodger Stadium plan is exceptionally poor even if one takes Musk's promises at face value.
— urbanize.la

Alon Levy pokes holes in Elon Musk's public transit plans for Los Angeles. Musk's plan involves tunneling under Sunset Boulevard between the Dodger Stadium and one of three Red Line stops: Vermont/Sunset, Vermont/Santa Monica, or Vermont/Beverly. Levy cites major issues with construction... View full entry

A venture firm and a major taxi company began trials of passenger-carrying autonomous taxi services on Monday with an eye on launching the full service around 2020 when Tokyo hosts the Olympics and the Paralympics.

ZMP Inc., a Tokyo-based developer of autonomous driving technology, and Hinomaru Kotsu Co., said they are the first in the world to offer autonomous taxi services to fare-paying passengers in the test through Sept. 8.
— Japan Times

Other tech companies and automakers have also been testing autonomous driving services in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. If the Tokyo RoboCar MiniVan trial is successful, officials hope to scale up the program to assist with the increased transportation demand during the 2020 Summer Olympics and... View full entry

Visions of the future [autonomous vehicles] will bring have already crept into City Council meetings, political campaigns, state legislation and decisions about what cities should build today. That unnerves some transportation planners and transit advocates, who fear unrealistic hopes for driverless cars — and how soon they’ll get here — could lead cities to mortgage the present for something better they haven’t seen.
— The New York Times

With new technologies emerging, cities are debating the most effective transportation systems to fund. Caught in the midst of this struggle is the proposition of paving over the New York subway in order to create an underground highway for autonomous vehicles. Those championing the idea believe... View full entry

This partnership between human and machine is what lies ahead as automation tools permeate our lives at a quickening pace. As many worry about the potential for robots to steal our jobs (or lead a violent overthrow of society), the reality may be more nuanced: They may end up being something more like creative collaborators [...] We must re-tool the workforce, be ever learning, and open to rapid change to reduce the negative impact.
— citylab.com

Brooks Rainwater asserts urban spaces as the testing grounds for the impending automation revolution and asks whether this will simply eliminate jobs or create new, better ones. While job displacement estimations vary, there is no denying the tremendous impact emerging technologies will have on... View full entry

Bombardier Rail Technologies, ACS Infrastructure Development, Balfour Beatty, Fluor Enterprises and HOCHTIEF PPP Solutions North America have all been chosen to deliver a $4.9bn project to design, build and install an automated people mover system at Los Angeles International Airport. [...]The system will run on a 3.6km elevated dual-lane guideway and will serve six newly-built stations, creating connections between the airport, public and private transportation, and a new car rental facility.
— Construction Global

If Uber is to get its “flying taxi” service off the ground, it will need dozens of launchpads and landing sites on rooftops around cities as a supportive infrastructure. At the ride-hailing company’s second annual Elevate conference in Los Angeles, six architecture firms presented their winning designs of what these so-called “Skyports” could look like. And holy cow, these things look straight out of Star Wars.
— The Verge

It was all futuristic sky towers, helipads, and beehive references this week when six architecture firms presented their "uberAIR Skyport" design proposals for Uber's autonomous flying taxi service in the not-too-distant future. According to the call for proposals, all facilities needed to be... View full entry

They estimate that the Jaguar fleet alone will be capable of doing a million trips each day in 2020. [...] if Waymo is even within 50 percent of that number in two years, the United States will have entered an entirely new phase in robotics and technology.
— The Atlantic

In his piece for The Atlantic, Alexis C. Madrigal looks beyond the technological and economic implications of Waymo's latest announcement to add 20,000 electric self-driving Jaguar I-Pace SUVs to its rapidly growing ride-hailing fleet by 2020 and instead think about the social (how... View full entry

The link between property and transport has been perhaps the most durable in human history.

Since the ancients, few things have delivered higher land values with more certainty than advances in transport, from roads to canals, railways to highways. [...]

But now, the dawn of the driverless car—promising a utopia of stress-free commutes, urban playgrounds and the end of parking hassles—threatens to complicate the calculus for anyone buying property.
— Bloomberg

Bloomberg Technology explains how the real estate industry is already preparing for all that sweet, sweet valuable space to open up for development once the widespread arrival of driverless vehicles makes parked cars — and the blocked square footage they occupy — a thing of the past. View full entry

Urban drivers spend an average of 20 minutes per trip looking for parking and studies have found that anywhere from about 30 to 60 percent of the cars you see driving around a downtown core are doing just that. The energy spent looking for parking burns 47,000 gallons of gas and generates... View full entry

Teaming up with NASA is a big deal for Uber. First, it allows the company to tout the approval of the highly regarded space agency to skeptics. [...] Holden said that Uber wouldn’t have to wait for 2020 before it starts testing things out IRL. The company aims to begin operating a fleet of low-flying helicopters around Dallas-Fort Worth Airport — while working with air traffic controllers to not encroach on their flight paths —as a way to test NASA’s UTM system.
— The Verge

Uber has teamed up with NASA to create an aerial taxi service called UberAIR. Los Angles was just announced as a city now working with the company to host their program along with Dallas-Forth Worth and Dubai. At least 19 other companies are currently developing flying car plans. Check out... View full entry

The Hunan city of Zhuzhou is currently testing out an unmanned train that doesn't run on rails. You know, like a bus.

The Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit (ART) is being dubbed by Chinese state media the "world's first smart rapid rail bus," whatever that means. The train/bus (trus?) was first shown off in June this year. It uses sensors to determine the dimensions of the road and make a virtual track for itself to ride along.
— Shanghaiist

At first glance, Zhuzhou's Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit system that's currently being tested promises to enjoy a brighter future (and less ridicule) than the Traffic Elevated "car-eating" Bus that the City of Qinhuangdao announced to much fanfare last summer — only to find it stalled and... View full entry

It’s 2027 (or 2037) and the age of the self-driving car. City-dwellers have traded in their car keys for ride hails. Street parking has been replaced by wider sidewalks and bike lanes, while developers are busy converting garages into much-needed housing.

That’s one vision of how self-driving cars will affect U.S. real estate, laid out in a report by MIT’s Center for Real Estate. But it’s not the only one.
— bloomberg.com

"Even as reclaimed parking spaces fuel a downtown building boom," Bloomberg reports, "autonomous vehicles will encourage builders to push deeper into the exurban fringe, confident that homebuyers will tolerate longer commutes now that they don’t have to drive, according to the report [...]."... View full entry

Renault recently revealed their new concept for an autonomous vehicle that fully integrates into one's home. Called the Symbioz, the idea seems obvious enough—many models for self-driving vehicles have interiors that convert into arrangements typical of the living room and this one comes... View full entry